A food blog aimed at finding the costs of dining in!

Savoury Caramelized Onion Scones

Scones are one of my favourite things to bake. Mainly because I’m absolutely horrible at baking and scones are incredibly easy to make! And for less than $3, you can make a batch of a dozen scones!

I’m much more into savoury flavours than I am to sweet. I find that a caramelized onion scone is a good balance in between both.

*Ingredients & cost calculations below*

The first thing you’ll want to do is to caramelize the onions. I chose to use yellow onions, some people prefer to use sweet onions. Either will do, just don’t use red onions and it’ll be fine! Chop the onion first in half, peel off the skin, cut off the ends, and slice as you go. You’ll most likely get a litter teary at the point.

Get a thick flat bottom pan, I used a cast iron skillet that I got from a second-hand store for $4.99 that’s been nothing but kind to me, and put it on the stove at a medium-low heat. Throw a tablespoon of butter in the pan. Once the butter melts, toss the onions in and stir occasionally. After about 10 minutes, you’ll see your onions have decreased in size by quite a bit, it’s just getting dehydrated. At this point you can choose the toss in a tablespoon of brown sugar if you want your onions to be a bit more sweet.

Continue cooking the onions for about half an hour, a bit more if you wish for it to be even more caramelized.

They should look a little bit like the photo above. Take the onions out and put them on a plate or cutting board. Time to chop them up!

Make sure the pieces resemble small cubes. Now, its time to cool them. Just put the cutting board into the fridge for now. While doing this, heat your oven to 375F.

Before you get started on the scones, make the buttermilk. Just put the milk in a bowl and add the lemon juice. Set it aside and in 10-15 minutes, voila you have buttermilk!

Finally! The scones!

Take the flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and salt and mix it in a large bowl. Next, cut your cold butter into cubes (around 1cm) and knead in with the flour mix, but not too much! This is the worst thing you can do with scones, do not mix in the butter too much, or else the scones won’t be very flaky and you’ll have yourself a batch of biscuits. That’s okay if that’s what you want though.

Next, add in the buttermilk and start mixing! This is when you take the chopped caramelized onions out of the fridge and toss them into the mix. Once everything’s mixed in, transfer the dough to a surface dusted with flour. Roll out the dough and try to flatten by hand so it’s about 1 1/2 inches thick.

You can now either just take a knife and cut the dough into triangles or use a circular cookie cutter and cut your scones! Once everything’s ready, get a baking sheet and lay out some parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment paper, aluminum foil will work just fine, spray some Pam on so nothing sticks, and you’re ready to get baking!

I put my scones on the top rack and leave it in for 20 minutes or once it starts getting golden brown. And just under 1 hour you have yourself a batch of flaky, savoury, and delicious caramelized onion scones. And guess what the cost was.. $2.92! Compared to bakery cost of $24+.

Hope you enjoy my first recipe post!

INGREDIENTS & COSTS FOR 12 SCONES

3 cups flour, and 1/2 cup for your work surface ($0.792)

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda ($0.01)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder ($0.122)

2 tablespoons sugar ($0.035)

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt ($0.022)

5 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter (salted works too, just omit the salt if you don’t have unsalted), cut into 1cm cubes, plus 1 tablespoon for the onions ($0.96)

1 cup of buttermilk (or if you’re a regular human who doesn’t have buttermilk on hand, 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice gets you the same thing in 10-15 minutes!) ($0.45 for milk and $0.11 for the lemon juice)

2 medium-sized yellow onions ($0.44)

Total Cost = $2.92*

*Depending the cost of the ingredients in your area, the cost may be more or less. I live in a fairly inflated part of town, so chances are your cost will be less.

Need the proof?

I’m referring to a Loblaws (a generic grocery chain in Canada) weekly flyer and their website.